ReadWrite - dellhttp://readwrite.com/tag/dell
enCopyright 2015 Wearable World Inc.http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rssTue, 03 Mar 2015 16:11:00 -0800Bitcoin Black Friday Wants You To Remember Bitcoin Exists<!-- tml-version="2" --><div tml-image="ci01af657affa5860d" tml-image-caption=""><figure><img src="http://a5.files.readwrite.com/image/upload/c_fill,cs_srgb,dpr_1.0,q_80,w_620/MTE5NTU2MzIyMzQ0MjczNDE5.jpg" /><figcaption></figcaption></figure></div><p>Spending <a href="http://readwrite.com/2013/08/08/whats-bitcoin-worth-in-the-real-world">bitcoins</a> is a little bit like spending gold. Most stores don’t accept it, and owners want to hold on to it anyway just in case the value hikes up. </p><p><a href="http://www.bitcoinblackfriday.com/">Bitcoin Black Friday</a> is Jon Holmquist’s solution to stagnating Bitcoin transactions. Amid a recent report that 70% of Bitcoins remain unspent for <a href="http://www.coindesk.com/analysis-around-70-bitcoins-dormant-least-six-months/">six months or more</a>, the Nov. 28 shopping day aims to entice owners of the cryptocurrency to make purchases. With Friday-only discounts offered from online merchants for those who pay with bitcoin, it also aims to improve and increase Bitcoin’s public image through an increasingly large shopping event.</p><blockquote><p><strong>See also: </strong><a href="http://readwrite.com/2013/11/26/bitcoin-black-friday"><strong>Bitcoin Black Friday Aims To Get People To Actually Spend Their Bitcoins</strong></a></p></blockquote><p>Holmquist, founder of Bitcoin Black Friday, lists the one-day event as his primary employment on <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonholmquist">his LinkedIn</a>. He spends a major part of the year reaching out to Bitcoin merchants about participating and drumming up publicity on Bitcoin forums. </p><p>This year marks the third annual Bitcoin Black Friday. In 2012, it was held on Nov. 9, a <a href="https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/History">second anniversary of sorts for Bitcoin</a>. Holmquist moved it to the more traditional day-after-Thanksgiving date and experienced a jump from <a href="http://www.thebitcointrader.com/2013/11/bitcoin-black-friday-parters-with-fight.html">75 merchants</a> to around 600, netting about 100,000 visitors to the Bitcoin Black Friday central hub, according to Holmquist.</p><p>"The big problem for us is that most merchants don't want to plan ahead," Holmquist <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/gift-guide/get-ready-bitcoin-black-friday-deals-n254851">told NBC</a>. "It's a lot of smaller merchants, so they put it off until the day of or the day before."</p><p>In 2013, Holmquist reported that Bitcoin sales hit the equivalent of $6 million during the event. This year, he told NBC that 1,200 merchants are expected to take part. There are as many as 80,000 Bitcoin-accepting merchants globally, the New York Times <a href="http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/08/14/for-merchants-bitcoin-shows-more-pop-than-potential/?_r=0">reports</a>, so Bitcoin Black Friday has a lot of room to grow. Mainly, Holmquist hopes to use the event to attract people who aren’t already Bitcoin users to consider the currency.</p><p>"We have two things planned," he told NBC, regarding low-risk purchasing options. "First is the ability to instantly purchase bitcoin with your credit card: a small amount, like $25 worth. For most people, that's not too much of a risk. And we're also going to have a section [of the site] where you can purchase something for a small amount of money."</p><p>Holmquist has a lot of allies in the form of merchants who are finally willing to bet big on Bitcoin. PayPal <a href="https://www.paypal-community.com/t5/PayPal-Forward/PayPal-and-Virtual-Currency/ba-p/828230">announced</a> in September that it had entered into agreements with Bitcoin payment processors BitPay, Coinbase and GoCoin, allowing North American merchants who uses PayPal to accept Bitcoin payments. Several major companies like such as <a href="http://cointelegraph.com/news/112102/dell-computers-announces-bitcoin-acceptance-through-coinbase">Dell</a> and <a href="http://cointelegraph.com/news/112663/showroomprive-becomes-largest-european-bitcoin-retailer">Showroomprive</a> in Europe have also begun to recently accept Bitcoin payments.</p><blockquote><p><strong>See also:&nbsp;</strong><a href="http://readwrite.com/2014/02/25/bitcoin-mt-gox-financial-crisis"><strong>The Mt. Gox Implosion Is Bitcoin's First Financial Crisis</strong></a></p></blockquote><p>Since last year, the value of a single Bitcoin has crashed from north of $1,000 at the end of 2013 to about $370 <a href="http://preev.com/">today</a>. The plummet is credited in part to the fall of Mt. Gox, a formerly popular Bitcoin exchange that no longer exists. Now that people are less likely to see Bitcoins as nest eggs, and the options for spending them are ever increasing, they may be more willing to part with them.&nbsp;</p><p><em>Photo by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/100239928@N08/9510800941/">btckeychain</a></em></p>And make spending it worth your timehttp://readwrite.com/2014/11/26/bitcoin-black-friday-2014
http://readwrite.com/2014/11/26/bitcoin-black-friday-2014WebWed, 26 Nov 2014 08:07:44 -0800Lauren OrsiniHP Wants To Be Your OpenStack Vendor<!-- tml-version="2" --><div tml-image="ci01b27955e0018266" tml-render-position="center" tml-render-size="large"><figure><img src="http://a4.files.readwrite.com/image/upload/c_fill,cs_srgb,dpr_1.0,q_80,w_620/MTIyMjkzNTQ4NTU1OTg4MjQ5.jpg" /></figure></div><p><a href="https://www.openstack.org/">OpenStack</a>&nbsp;is an open-source vehicle for rapidly provisioning data center resources, and it's becoming one of the biggest movements in enterprise IT in years.&nbsp;HP wants it to be theirs, and&nbsp;<a href="http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/hp-launches-hp-helion-portfolio-of-cloud-products-and-services-nyse-hpq-1907155.htm">the company is investing $1 billion</a>&nbsp;in the&nbsp;next two years on cloud products, engineering, and professional services via its&nbsp;<a href="http://www8.hp.com/us/en/cloud/hphelion-openstack-community.html">Project Helion</a>.</p><p>OpenStack addresses a very base level human instinct <a href="http://readwrite.com/2014/04/25/shadow-it-cloud-open-source-developers">demonstrated by shadow IT</a>—that of not wanting to be marginalized. If a developer doesn't get what she wants fast enough, she'll sneak around the roadblocks and go directly to the cloud. With a credit card, it's easy to get compute power and storage for projects in just five minutes on Amazon Web Services or another cloud provider.</p><blockquote tml-render-position="right" tml-render-size="medium"><p><strong>See also: <a href="http://readwrite.com/2013/12/31/2014-cloud-predictions-amazon-web-services-google">Cloud Wars In 2014: Amazon Versus Google And Other Follies</a></strong></p></blockquote><p>One way to look at&nbsp;OpenStack&nbsp;is that it's a way for vendors to lead customers to their cloud.&nbsp;<a href="http://readwrite.com/2014/02/07/enterprise-open-source-contributions">ReadWrite contributor Matt Asay said</a>&nbsp;money tends to flow to the companies that contribute the most to open source projects. “This makes sense, as prospective buyers prefer to buy from the vendor that shows the most leadership on a project,”&nbsp;<a href="http://readwrite.com/2013/11/05/will-ubuntus-openstack-dominance-turn-into-cash">he said</a>.</p><p>HP appears to be taking this concept to heart, both with its significant financial investment, as well as through its work on OpenStack. HP&nbsp;<a href="%20http://blog.bitergia.com/2014/04/17/the-openstack-icehouse-release-activity-and-organizations/">contributed</a>&nbsp;the third-most commits to the latest Icehouse release of OpenStack, after Red Hat and IBM.</p><h2>HP's Plans For OpenStack</h2><p>HP said it will offer two editions—one free for proof of concepts, pilots, and basic production workloads, and another “enhanced commercial edition” for enterprises.&nbsp;HP's Platform-as-a Service development component of Helion, based on <a href="http://cloudfoundry.org/index.html">Cloud Foundry</a>, will be released later this year.</p><p>HP's OpenStack plans are causing some concern, however.&nbsp;Dell, another OpenStack supporter that&nbsp;<a href="http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/uscorp1/secure/2013-12-12-dell-cloud-red-hat-linux-openstack">sells Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform</a>&nbsp;on its servers, is not in love with HP’s plans. Dell's chief technical evangelist Sam Greenblatt&nbsp;implied in a <a href="%20http://en.community.dell.com/dell-blogs/dell4enterprise/b/dell4enterprise/archive/2014/05/07/dell-s-commitment-to-the-open-cloud.aspx">blog post</a>&nbsp;that HP's announcement "feels like a step back to closed architectures."</p><blockquote><p>With this approach, HP chooses how much proprietary software they want to include into a distribution, which runs counter to the principles of open source distributions. This model burdens organizations to have the OpenStack expertise and resources in house to sort through and decide which distribution is right for them, and how to deploy and maintain it. This takes me back to the days of Linux when the industry was faced with hundreds of different distributions creating confusion and difficult decisions for customers. It feels like HP/UX Unix déjà vu all over again.</p></blockquote><p>Traditional vendors like HP, Oracle and VMware are reshaping their offerings to rapidly deploy in the cloud. Oracle recently called <a href="http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/solaris11/technologies/openstack-2135773.html">Solaris 11.2</a> a "cloud operating system," and said its centralized management with OpenStack would enable deployment to private cloud instances in minutes instead of weeks. VMware and SAP plan to offer the in-memory database Hana on <a href="http://www.vmware.com/in/company/news/releases/vmw-sap-hybrid-cloud-services-052113">VMware's cloud</a>.&nbsp;</p><p>HP wants to hold your hand and guide you with its own team of&nbsp;cloud experts and network of service providers.&nbsp;HP's OpenStack Technology Indemnification Program is geared toward allaying customer fears about open source technology adoption, protecting customers using HP Helion OpenStack code from "third-party patent, copyright, and trade-secret infringement claims directed to OpenStack code alone or in combination with Linux code."</p><p>HP operates more than 80 data centers, and will offer OpenStack-based public cloud services in 20 of them within the next 18 months.</p><p>“Cloud is not a destination, it’s actually how you deliver the new style of IT," said Henry Gomez, HP's chief marketing and communications officer. "It’s not the technology, it's what it can do for you, your organization, and the world."</p><p><em>Image courtesy of <a href="http://www8.hp.com/us/en/cloud/helion-overview.html">HP</a>.</em></p>A billion-dollar investment says HP is getting serious about the cloud.http://readwrite.com/2014/05/08/hp-helion-openstack-vendor-cloud
http://readwrite.com/2014/05/08/hp-helion-openstack-vendor-cloudCloudThu, 08 May 2014 05:11:00 -0700Jodi MardesichEnterprise In 2013: Enterprise Ascends Into The Cloud<!-- tml-version="2" --><p></p><div tml-image="ci01b280a300018266" tml-render-position="right" tml-render-size="medium"><figure><img src="http://a4.files.readwrite.com/image/upload/c_fill,cs_srgb,dpr_1.0,q_80,w_620/MTIyMzAxNTc2Mzg2NzQwODM4.jpg" /></figure></div><p><em><a href="http://readwrite.com/series/reflect">ReadWriteReflect</a>&nbsp;offers a look back at major technology trends, products and companies of the past year.</em></p><p>In looking back over the past 12 months, it’s apparent businesses pushed the envelope of the programmable web. Instead of being influenced by consumer apps and trends like BYOD, employers this year looked inward to solve their internal business problems.</p><p>Companies have expanded the use of potent business partners, providers, and platforms at the expense of more consumer-driven technologies that defined 2011 and 2012. Here now are the biggest influences on business, with a heavy reliance on cloud computing and avoidance of government intervention.</p><h2>Microsoft: Buys Nokia, Searches Beyond Ballmer</h2><p>It’s a tossup between these two events to figure out which has more impact for business. The $7.2-billion purchase of Nokia is expected to increase Microsoft’s reach outside North America but is also likely to expand Microsoft’s reach into open source frameworks such as Symbian and Android.</p><p>The acquisition news was only eclipsed by the departure of Steve Ballmer as Microsoft CEO. The search for his replacement (potentially the first Microsoft outsider to lead the company) will have a massive impact on the direction Microsoft’s customers will turn. Analysts are already calling for a split of the profitable game console business away from the struggling enterprise products. But whether Microsoft’s next CEO is Alan Mulally, Satya Nadella, Tony Bates, Stephen Elop or another dark-horse candidate, businesses will be keeping close eye on how the new boss will be approaching key technologies including cloud services, data analysis and mobile productivity.</p><h2>Tech (Sorta) Fights Back On NSA Snooping</h2><p>The aforementioned Microsoft was one of a handful of companies politely asking the U.S. National Security Agency to keep their Spy Vs. Spy game away from proprietary information and customer data. AOL, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Twitter and Yahoo also came out late this year against the fed’s wanton customer information collection. On the surface, the website called Reform Government Surveillance.com looks good for customers, but most security analysts know that asking for government transparency is like asking for the Healthcare.gov site to work: a slow and sloppy process. Businesses will likely issue their own protective measures.</p><h2>PaaS: Cloud Services For Sale</h2><p>Amazon Web Services faced stiff competition from a nearly endless supply of suppliers. Google’s Compute Engine, Microsoft’s Azure, Rackspace, Engine Yard, Heroku and IBM all provided businesses with alternatives to Amazon’s cloud computing services (platform, storage, service or otherwise. Other notable PaaS suitors for business contracts include CloudBees, dotCloud, Savvis, SoftLayer, NaviSite, Verizon’s Terremark and VMware’s spinoff Pivotal Initiative. Bottom line for business in 2013: many choices, more pricing options, slow adoption rates. Unfortunately, 2014 may provide the same story.</p><h2>Mobile Backend As A Service: Parse Vs. StackMob</h2><p>Acquisitions to bolster mobile business were healthy in 2013, and no more robust than in the area of developer support services.</p><p>Facebook, eager to expand its mobile universe, plopped down money for Parse, a company known for helping clients create mobile and Web apps. The company is expected to help Facebook overcome the embarrassment of its Facebook phone (HTC First) released on April 4. The acquisition helps companies better fit their own apps into Parse’s iOS and Android developer kits, but paves the way for other mobile app services to charge more.</p><p>PayPal similarly finished out the year with an acquisition of StackMob. Similar to Parse, StackMob provides data storage application programming interfaces that help mobile apps expand, push user notifications through cloud services, and provides analysis and support tools for the companies working with StackMob.</p><h2>More Enterprise Fun</h2><p>As with most business stories, some were more smoke and mirrors than pure substance. We include them here mostly because they were entertaining to watch unfold.</p><p>Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos strategically suggested that your company’s packages could be delivered by robot drone aircraft. While still in the idea stage, the concept video showing a backdoor delivery was definitely a shot across the bow of competitors. Amazon is none to be trifled with.</p><p>Dell decided its business plans have been turned upside down and opted out of the public trading markets in favor of private ownership. While the tumultuous debate raged on, Dell seems to be making better products for a wider audience including a nicer tablet computer, and solid-state servers and storage.</p><p>The courtroom drama between Apple and Samsung escalated quickly to name-calling stage following a judge’s decision to award Apple an additional $290 million in damages. Samsung’s own court system in South Korea even seems to favor Apple over Samsung saying the Cupertino-company did not infringe on Samsung patents relating to iPhones and iPads.</p><p>Twitter provide the circus in form of an initial public offering of stock (IPO). Despite not showing a profit in the foreseeable future, Twitter did much better than its social media counterpart Facebook did with its IPO in 2012. Analysts suggest Twitter has a better advantage over Facebook based on its ability to broadcast in real time.</p><h2>How Well Did We Predict 2013?</h2><p>Last year, we looked at the tea leaves and predicted enterprises would use services from companies like Acquia, FuzeBox, Leap Motion and Box as a competitive advantage. Cloudera, GoodData, MobileIron, Zendesk, Okta and Ping Identity were also noted for their potential. Of the bunch, all companies seem to have gained momentum.</p><p>Let’s hope enterprise in 2014 brings more great technology stories to the table.</p><p><em>Image courtesy of Flickr user <a href="”http://www.flickr.com/photos/lumaxart/”">Scott Maxwell</a>&nbsp;via CC</em>.</p>Enterprises ascend, spies abound and drones descend. A look back at the the enterprise in 2013.http://readwrite.com/2013/12/27/enterprise-in-2013-cloud-nsa-startups-top-trends
http://readwrite.com/2013/12/27/enterprise-in-2013-cloud-nsa-startups-top-trendsWorkFri, 27 Dec 2013 10:02:00 -0800Michael SingerDell's Business Model Shifts To The Cloud In Pact With Dropbox<!-- tml-version="2" --><p>In a move to make itself more relevant to companies hungry for drag-and-drop online storage, Dell announced new plans that will bring Dropbox to several of Dell’s products and services.</p><p>Dell’s expansion into cloud-based storage says a lot about its future strategy. Following its 2011 break with EMC as its storage provider, Dell quickly aligned itself with many cloud-based storage providers and application vendors.</p><p>This week, Dell Ventures—the company’s venture capital arm—announced a fresh round of $300 million to invest in strategic startups to help build out Dell’s data centers, storage and mobile products. The round follows $60 million that Dell invested last year for storage-specific companies to help it build out its data center business. Popular personal cloud startup Dropbox is expected to gain a portion of those funds.</p><p>The venture capital money follows Dell’s <a href="http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20131212005933/en/Dell-Dropbox-Partner-Businesses-Embrace-Evolving-Workforce">announcements</a> last week that it’s salespeople will be offering Dropbox for Business to new and existing customers. Dell said it will also pre-install Dropbox’s online storage service (complete with Dell’s own brand of data protection software) on its consumer and business tablets.</p><p>Dropbox boasts that it is used by more than 4 million businesses and upwards of 1 billion files uploaded every 24 hours. That’s a small drop in the bucket compared to the 1 exabyte of data, analysts suggest are stored in the cloud. That’s a key market Dell is hoping to be a part of.</p><p>To get there, Dell will promote the use of Dropbox and provide its customers’ IT departments with software support to make sure Dropbox meets compliance and regulatory requirements. Dell also wants to avoid any data meltdowns like <a href="http://readwrite.com/2013/08/28/dropbox-hacked-reverse-engineered-client">the ones Dropbox had earlier this year</a>.</p><p>Dell’s other notable cloud storage partnerships include its 14-year run with Red Hat; OpenStack cloud and open source application infrastructure provider Mirantis and solid-state storage maker Skyera.</p><p>As more businesses move simple storage to cloud-based systems, providers like Dropbox are sure to be in high demand.</p><p><em>Photo courtesy of <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/goma/">Flickr user mekuria getinet</a></em></p>Dude, you’re getting space on the public cloud.http://readwrite.com/2013/12/17/dell-dropbox-pact-perks-up-business-argument-for-online-storage
http://readwrite.com/2013/12/17/dell-dropbox-pact-perks-up-business-argument-for-online-storageCloudTue, 17 Dec 2013 06:14:00 -0800Michael SingerDell's Private Little Company Is Crazy... Like A Fox<!-- tml-version="2" --><div tml-image="ci01b282fc10038266" tml-render-position="center" tml-render-size="large"><figure><img src="http://a4.files.readwrite.com/image/upload/c_fill,cs_srgb,dpr_1.0,q_80,w_620/MTIyMzA0MTU3NjYyMDgwMjgx.jpg" /></figure></div><p>Charles Foster Kane dreamed of Rosebud; Michael Dell yearned for his old company back. Yesterday, one of them got his wish, when it was announced that Dell Inc. shareholders would be returning the company to Dell's ownership on Nov. 1.</p><p>Seven months, $25 billion and dealing with Carl Ichan may seem like a lot to pay for a company that primarily makes PCs in a market that is seeing a dwindling of PC sales—especially the Icahn part—but by convincing Dell's shareholders to sell their stock back to him and his investor partner Silver Lake Partners, Dell may have done the best thing to keep his company alive.</p><p>That may not seem readily apparent if you listened to Dell CFO Brian Gladden's remarks in yesterday's call announcing the news. Gladden stated that Dell Inc. would pretty much stay the course, start to invest more heavily in enterprise software and services, such as cloud computing, and keep on making PCs and "other end-user computing devices"—what we call tablets.</p><p>On first pass, it sounds like Dell Inc. wants to become more like competitors Hewlett-Packard and IBM (though the latter sent its desktop business off to China's Lenovo years ago). Which sounds a little nuts. Even if you put aside the heavy competition that these companies will bring to Dell (and, really, you can't), Dell is focusing on a sector that is at best in flux right now, as consumerization of enterprise IT continues apace, and at worst in some peril, as trust issues regarding cloud computing are still being sorted out by companies in the wake of the NSA leaks.</p><p>But on further review, it may be that Dell is in the best shape moving forward precisely because of those potential hurdles.</p><p>The truth is, selling to the enterprise is no longer an easy game of checking off an order with "how many servers do you need?" and "You want desktops with that order?" IT is changing at a deep fundamental level, and IT administrators in the enterprise (and nearly every size of business, for that matter) are trying to figure out what to do.</p><p>Because of that uncertainty, you see software and hardware companies forced to adjust to market conditions at a pace that some would consider break-neck at times. That's because, as mostly public companies, they must do everything they can to make money or stem the flow of losing money.</p><p>Public companies, because of their responsibilities to their shareholders, can only afford to take a certain amount of risk before they have to cut their losses and move on to another plan. This is why we see drastic moves like Microsoft becoming a "devices and services" company and more subtle moves like Google's infamous Fall and Spring cleanings to axe cloud services that people might love but aren't making the company any money.</p><p>But, as a private company, Dell may very well be in a position to take those risks and stick with them. Here's one hypothetical: if everyone in the hardware market wants to put their eggs in the tablet basket (Dell included), they can, but if tablets somehow fail in the enterprise sector, then the public companies would likely drop their tablet products like hot potatoes. Dell, in theory, could stay the course, slowly and steadily filling orders for businesses that <em>can</em> make business use of the tablets, and innovating their tablet line to something that gets it right.</p><p>This example might play out, because for public companies, the definition of failure is usually "it's not making us truckloads of money right now." Public companies have less patience, because their shareholders do. A private company could take the risk and go for the longer play.</p><p>It may not be in tablets; it might be in PCs. In fact, I think ultimately PCs will be a good run for Dell Inc., as I remain convinced there will be a bottom to this PC decline, if only because some people have to get some work done. In their quests to bringing in the bucks, Dell's competition might let their PC efforts slide, leaving more chances for Dell to capture more of a market that will never truly evaporate.</p><p>Whatever it is, Dell should be able to take its time and figure it out.</p><p>Is going private the be-all-end-all for Dell Inc.? No, because they could still make bonehead moves and drive themselves into the ground. But with more time and freedom to plan, they may have a better shot to react to this IT market than their competition.</p>Michael Dell gets his company back and wants to take on IBM and HP on their turf. Sounds insane, but this just might work.http://readwrite.com/2013/09/13/dell-private-little-company-crazy-like-fox
http://readwrite.com/2013/09/13/dell-private-little-company-crazy-like-foxWorkFri, 13 Sep 2013 07:02:00 -0700Brian ProffittAmazon Grows In Government Cloud, Despite Competitor Smack-Talk <!-- tml-version="2" --><p></p><div tml-image="ci01b282ea70008266" tml-render-position="right" tml-render-size="medium"><figure><img src="http://a1.files.readwrite.com/image/upload/c_fill,cs_srgb,dpr_1.0,q_80,w_620/MTIyMzA0MDgxNjk0ODUxNjg2.jpg" /></figure></div><p>Say what you will about about the Central Intelligence Agency, but one thing is clear: these are people who do not like to mess around with their data. The CIA is in the business of secrets, so their potential $600 million contract with Amazon Web Services is perhaps the greatest validation of cloud computing —and AWS—to date.</p><p>AWS may appear to need such validation, if you listen to competitors like IBM and VMware. But while all the caterwauling is going on, Amazon is quietly making its presence known in the government cloud sector anyway.</p><p>While many eyes in the enterprise IT community were watching VMware squaring off against AWS with its own vCloud Hybrid Service, AWS was holding the grand opening of its new Herndon, VA offices Monday. It was a nice cap to a crappy weekend, when yet another outage in the cloud provider's northern Virginia facilities borked AirBNB, Instagram and Netflix—among others—for a few hours this weekend.</p><p>But it would be premature to hold a pity party for AWS just yet: the company is faring rather well as a cloud services vendor, easily fending off the likes of Rackspace, HP and now VMware. Its government progress is particularly telling: AWS' two-year-old <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/govcloud-us/">GovCloud program</a> just announced the addition of CloudFormation technology to the GovCloud service. CloudFormation enables developers and systems administrators (collectively referred to as DevOps) to automatically provision AWS cloud resources and run applications by either using sample templates or rolling their own configurations.</p><p>GovCloud, itself launched in the summer of 2011, is a hardened collection of AWS' enterprise-ready services, slowly adding features like CloudFormation to its portfolio even as GovCloud makes a splash among government IT shops.</p><h2>The PR Battle For Government Cloud</h2><p>The aforementioned CIA contract is definitely a diamond for AWS and GovCloud, should AWS actually get it. The CIA actually awarded AWS the job to run Hadoop jobs with the Amazon Elastic MapReduce service, as well as long-term data storage services, in an on-site cloud back in March, but IBM filed a formal protest against the contract award a couple of weeks later. Now the entire process is up for rebid, thanks to a lucky break IBM caught from the Government Accounting Office (GAO).</p><p>IBM can hardly be blamed for screaming bloody murder about the original contract award—$600 million is enough of a payday that even Big Blue would feel the loss. Not to mention the bigger payoff from such a gig: any cloud service provider that can say it provides secure cloud services to the CIA would obtain serious cachet not only with other government agencies but with enterprise companies that might be on fence about taking the plunge into cloud computing.</p><p>It would also lend an additional benefit to AWS: the whole "new kid on the block" reputation AWS gets thrown its way from competitors like IBM and VMware would be blown out of the water. IBM and VMware have been especially nasty about it, too.</p><p>During VMware's Partner Exchange conference in February, <a href="http://www.crn.com/news/cloud/240149626/vmware-top-execs-lash-out-at-amazon-public-cloud.htm">President and COO Carl Eschenbach told attendees</a>, "I look at this audience, and I look at VMware and the brand reputation we have in the enterprise, and I find it really hard to believe that we cannot collectively beat a company that sells books."</p><p>Earlier this month, when AWS filed its own counter-complaint to the GAO's decision to let the CIA contract bid get a do-over, <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/20/amazon_vs_ibm_vs_cia_what_round_is_it_ive_lost_count/">IBM made this statement</a>:</p><blockquote></blockquote><p>We are confident the court in this case will uphold the GAO's ruling and the agency's follow-on actions implementing it. Unlike Amazon, IBM has a long history of delivering successful transformational projects like this for the U.S. government.</p><p>This "go away kid, you bother me" line of attack would seriously run out of ammunition should AWS ultimately walk away from this brouhaha with a shiny new contract from the CIA.</p><p>But it may have those chops already, despite what AWS' competitors would have you believe. In May, AWS received <a href="http://www.gsa.gov/portal/category/102371">FedRAMP certification</a> that approves cloud service providers for government work.</p><p>Even as AWS demonstrates it's good enough for government work, the company is also making inroads into government agencies as a service provider for vendors that use AWS in their workflow. This week <a href="http://fcw.com/articles/2013/08/28/interior-cloud-contract-aws-hidden-player.aspx">Federal Computing Weekly reported</a> on the Interior Department's awarding to 10 vendors of a 10-year $10 billion contract to handle its Foundation Cloud Hosting Services project. The FCW article also revealed that five of the vendors have relationships with AWS already.</p><blockquote></blockquote><p>FCW confirmed that AWS fits into the offerings of Aquilent, Autonomic Resources, Lockheed Martin, Smartronix and Unisys. Each partnership will be slightly different, but AWS clearly is positioned to get a piece of a potentially very large pie through the DOI deal.</p><p>There will be a lot of PR wrangling with the AWS-IBM battle over for the CIA contract, but the truth is that despite enterprise vendors' efforts to belittle the "bookseller" who wants to be a cloud service provider, AWS has already demonstrated it is ready to be a player in the government sector.</p><p>If IBM, VMware, Dell, HP and any other AWS competitor wants to take on the upstart, it will have to be with more than smack-talk.</p><p><em>Image courtesy of <a href="http://www.shutterstock.com">Shutterstock</a>.</em></p>Uncle Sam, would you like to add cloud services to your Amazon cart?http://readwrite.com/2013/08/30/amazon-government-cloud-competitors-ibm-cia
http://readwrite.com/2013/08/30/amazon-government-cloud-competitors-ibm-ciaCloudFri, 30 Aug 2013 07:25:00 -0700Brian ProffittDell Kills Its Public Cloud, Continues To Flail In Post-PC Era<!-- tml-version="2" --><div tml-image="ci01b2827b00026d19" tml-render-position="center" tml-render-size="large"><figure><img src="http://a5.files.readwrite.com/image/upload/c_fill,cs_srgb,dpr_1.0,q_80,w_620/MTIyMzAzNjAzMzQyODYzNjQx.jpg" /></figure></div><p>Dell is a computer company desperately in search of a new market as the desktop and laptop PCs dwindles. But the Austin-based company is finding that that an elusive target.</p><h2>Public Cloud? That's So 2011</h2><p>Yesterday the company <a href="http://www.dell.com/Learn/us/en/uscorp1/secure/2013-05-20-dell-public-cloud-partner-ecosystem">announced it was dropping Dell Cloud</a>, its home-grown infrastructure-as-a-service public cloud service. It is also pulling the plug on its planned OpenStack-based public cloud service and online storage service before they even get off the ground.</p><p>Dell isn't out the cloud game altogether, mind you - it will be reselling public cloud services through its new <a href="http://www.dell.com/Learn/us/en/555/cloud-computing/by-service-type-cloud-services-vcloud">Dell Cloud Partner Program</a>. And it's still working on private cloud offerings.</p><p>Dell's decision to drop its program after only two years isn't terribly surprising - it was regarded as pricey compared to similar offerings from HP and IBM, and going head to head with similar services from Amazon Web Services and Google without good pricing and a very solid support system is tantamount to suicide these days.</p><h2>Bring On The Dongles</h2><p>But Dell is still on the hunt for new revenue. Reports out today indicate that the hardware maker will be releasing a new thumb-drive PC, codenamed Project Ophelia, this July for a reported $100.</p><p><a href="http://www.pcworld.com/article/2039030/dells-thumb-pc-project-ophelia-to-ship-in-july.html">PC World</a> has revealed that the device will be based on Android and can be plugged into a TV or monitor via the HDMI port. File storage will be handled via Wyse's PocketCloud.</p><p>Dell wants to get this device in the hands of telecomm carriers, who could use Ophelia to deliver streaming TV to customers who don't currently have smart TVs or devices like Roku or Apple TV to pull in online content.</p><p>Developers will get their hands on the PC-on-a-stick first, in order to build Android apps and build up a collection of TV-friendly apps. Since there's a lot of Wyse thin-client tech packed into this thing, presumably there will be some capability to have portability between home and work.</p><p>This is an interesting concept, save for the fact that there are already similar and cheaper devices on the market now. The concept of a dongle PC is not new, and to date, they haven't really taken off.</p><p>The idea also ignores the very real trend away from vertical screen and keyboard/mouse devices to handheld tablets and smartphones. While Ophelia devices would give you portability, you still need a mouse, keyboard and screen to use these things… so the portability is constrained. And if I'm essentially recreating a PC-like portable work setup anyway, why not just use a laptop?</p><p>I suspect that's why Dell is emphasizing the telecom angle when it pitches these things. Carriers could offer Ophelia with video and data plans, maybe. But it's hard to imagine consumers buying these things off the shelf when there are other similarly priced set-top devices already on the market and proven to work.</p><p>Dell is clearly throwing a lot of things against the wall to see what sticks. Public cloud didn't work, and it's difficult to see Project Ophelia working out, either. Servers, however, <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2013/05/20/embattled-dell-finds-success-in-servers/">aren't doing badly right now</a>. Perhaps Dell should stick to what it knows best.</p>Dell is a company in search of a new mission, and it's not working out so well.http://readwrite.com/2013/05/21/dell-kills-its-public-cloud-continues-to-flail-in-post-pc-era
http://readwrite.com/2013/05/21/dell-kills-its-public-cloud-continues-to-flail-in-post-pc-eraCloudTue, 21 May 2013 06:50:12 -0700Brian ProffittCarl Icahn Makes Dell Buyout Offer: Let's Fire Michael Dell!<!-- tml-version="2" --><div tml-image="ci01b278ea00016d19" tml-render-position="center" tml-render-size="large"><figure><img src="http://a3.files.readwrite.com/image/upload/c_fill,cs_srgb,dpr_1.0,q_80,w_620/MTIyMjkzMDg1MjM2MzkxMTkz.jpg" /></figure></div><p>Notorious activist investor Carl Icahn has <a href="http://edgar.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/807985/000094787113000311/ss175186_dfan14a.htm">officially filed an offer</a>&nbsp;for Dell that would let investors keep their stake in the company while forcing out CEO and founder Michael Dell.&nbsp;See his full interview with Bloomberg below:</p>Notorious activist investor Carl Icahn has officially filed an offer for Dell that would let investors keep their stake in the company while forcing out CEO and founder Michael Dell. Click to see his full interview with Bloomberg.http://readwrite.com/2013/05/10/carl-icahn-makes-dell-buyout-offer-lets-fire-michael-dell
http://readwrite.com/2013/05/10/carl-icahn-makes-dell-buyout-offer-lets-fire-michael-dellWebFri, 10 May 2013 13:55:00 -0700ReadWrite EditorsWhy IBM Should Dump Its Low-End Server Business On Lenovo<!-- tml-version="2" --><div tml-image="ci01b2824940028266" tml-render-position="center" tml-render-size="large"><figure><img src="http://a1.files.readwrite.com/image/upload/c_fill,cs_srgb,dpr_1.0,q_80,w_620/MTIyMzAzMzg5Mzk5ODEwNjYy.jpg" /></figure></div><p>IBM has no stomach for low-margin businesses, which is why Big Blue may be ready to <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-18/ibm-revenue-misses-analysts-estimates-as-hardware-sales-slow.html">dump its commodity server business</a>&nbsp;— i.e., servers that run on Intel-compatible "x86" processors. If the reported talks&nbsp;with Lenovo lead to a sale, the move would mark IBM's final break with the low-end computer business.</p><h2>A Win-Win</h2><p>The deal would be a win-win for both companies. Lenovo, which bought IBM's PC business in 2005 for $1.75 billion, would immediately become the <a href="http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS23974913">third largest maker</a>&nbsp; of x86 servers, behind market leader Hewlett-Packard and runner-up Dell. Thanks to its market clout in its homeland, the Chinese company has risen to become the second largest PC maker worldwide, <a href="http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS24065413">according to</a> the latest numbers from IDC.&nbsp;</p><p>Adding x86 servers to its portfolio makes perfect sense for Lenovo, which has shown in PCs that it can do well in a low-margin, commodity market. For IBM, the opposite is true. The company's strength in hardware is in selling expensive — and profitable — mainframes.</p><p>IBM's mainframe business is the reason the company leads the global server market, at least in revenue terms. To give you some sense of how expensive these systems are, IBM's "System z" mainframe represented more than 12% of all server revenue worldwide in the fourth quarter. Because of a refresh in the product line, along with the introduction of new products, such as the zEnterprise, revenue from IBM's mainframe business rose almost 56% year over year in the quarter, <a href="http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS23974913">according to IDC</a>.</p><p>"Although revenue results for System z are traditionally heavier in the fourth quarter, this accelerated acquisition shows the breadth and depth of the IBM mainframe installed base," Jean Bozman, analyst for IDC said in a statement.</p><p>Lenovo would be a good buyer for IBM, because it doesn't compete in any of the markets IBM cares about, namely software and IT services. That wouldn't be the case if HP or Oracle were the buyer.</p><h2>Disruption In Server Market</h2><p>IBM may also have decided it wants no part of the disruption heading for the server market like a freight train. The increasing number of companies adopting cloud computing will mean fewer server sales, Larry Dignan <a href="http://www.zdnet.com/ibms-potential-x86-server-sale-to-lenovo-highlights-oncoming-train-7000014273/">points out</a>&nbsp;at ZDNet. In addition, Internet companies with large server farms, such as Facebook and Google, buy customized white-box servers, which can't be good in the long term for traditional sellers, like HP, Dell and IBM.</p><p>While no one outside of IBM or Lenovo know how much the business would fetch, someone familiar with the talks <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-18/ibm-said-to-be-in-talks-to-sell-low-end-server-unit-to-lenovo.html">told Bloomberg</a> that the price would range from $2.5 billion to $4.5 billion, depending on the assets and liabilities included.</p><h2>Lenovo Is Fired Up And Ready To Go</h2><p>Not everyone agrees that IBM would be doing itself a favor by selling its x86 business. Gartner analyst Sergis Mushell says that without x86, IBM only non-mainframe servers would be its lineup of machines that run its Power processors — and that demand for those products is shrinking.</p><p>In other words, IBM would miss out on the opportunities to build systems based on x86 "while [its Power] architecture's ecosystem is shrinking," Mushell said. "Do you see how it would not make a lot of sense?"</p><p>Lenovo, meanwhile, is hungry to move beyond the PC market. The company <a href="http://www.emc.com/about/news/press/2012/20120731-02.htm">announced last year</a>&nbsp;a partnership with EMC in which Lenovo planned to introduce x86 servers that would include EMC storage systems. As part of the deal, Lenovo agreed to sell EMC networked storage products in China.</p><p>Given the jumpstart it would get from owning IBM's x86 business, Lenovo may be willing to make an offer that's hard for IBM to refuse.</p><p><em>Image courtesy of <a href="http://www.shutterstock.com">Shutterstock</a></em></p>For IBM, the sale would provide an exit out of a low-margin, commodity business, while Lenovo would immediately become the third largest x86 server manufacturer in the world.http://readwrite.com/2013/04/19/ibm-should-dump-its-x86-business-to-lenovo
http://readwrite.com/2013/04/19/ibm-should-dump-its-x86-business-to-lenovoWorkFri, 19 Apr 2013 14:01:40 -0700Antone GonsalvesThe Enterprise Tablet Party Is Over For Apple<!-- tml-version="2" --><div tml-image="ci01b28219e0048266" tml-render-position="center" tml-render-size="large"><figure><img src="http://a1.files.readwrite.com/image/upload/c_fill,cs_srgb,dpr_1.0,q_80,w_620/MTIyMzAzMTg1Mzg4OTk1MTc0.jpg" /></figure></div><p>In 2010, Apple captivated PC users with the release of the iPad. The thin and light tablet with exceptional battery life, ease of use and attractive design became the must-have mobile device for many corporate executives and employees. With nothing comparable in the Windows PC world, Apple had the business market to itself.</p><p>But Apple is a consumer electronics company at heart; so future iPad models remained devoid of features that were needed to meet corporate requirements for security, deployment, manageability, up-time, support and training. In the meantime, Microsoft, Intel and PC manufacturers picked themselves up and plotted their comeback.&nbsp;After three hard years, PC makers have finally released Windows tablets that tech analyst firm Moor Insights &amp; Strategy says will likely reverse Apple's gains in the corporate market.</p><h2>Apple's Party Is Over</h2><p>"Enterprise tablets now exist that provide the best of both worlds between end user and IT, which puts the Apple in a precarious position of needing to add more robust enterprise features," Moor says <a href="http://www.moorinsightsstrategy.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/The-Latest-Extreme-Low-Power-Windows-Tablets-Now-Ready-for-the-Enterprise-by-Moor-Insights-and-Strategy.pdf">in a white paper</a> released Monday. "Until that point, Moor Insights &amp; Strategy recommends enterprises re-evaluate their iPad pilot and deployments."</p><p>In other words, the enterprise party is over for Apple's tablets.</p><p>The new Windows tablets that finally get it right when it comes to meeting the needs of corporations and their employees are the <a href="http://www8.hp.com/us/en/ad/elitepad/overview.html">Hewlett-Packard ElitePad 900</a>, the <a href="http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/latitude-10-tablet/pd">Dell Latitude 10</a>&nbsp;and the <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/products/us/tablet/thinkpad/thinkpad-tablet-2/">Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet 2</a>. Moor makes a convincing argument as to why it believes these three devices will steer companies away from the iPad.</p><h2>What's In the New Windows Tablets</h2><p>Two crucial components are Microsoft's Windows 8 and Intel's Atom processor Z2760. The former provides a touch-based interface that's a key element of any tablet's appeal, while the former delivers the performance and battery life. In fact, a comparison <a href="http://www.anandtech.com/show/6529/busting-the-x86-power-myth-indepth-clover-trail-power-analysis">review by AnandTech</a> found that battery life with the Z2760 surpassed the iPad 4 when Web browsing.</p><p>Because Intel has built a competitive chip based on the X86 instruction set, the three tablets can run the latest touch-enabled apps for Windows 8, as well as Windows 7 apps. Among the most important app is Microsoft Office, the enterprise standard for office productivity. Office doesn't run on the iPad, and Apple's productivity tools are not regarded as being on par with Microsoft's.</p><p>There's also more baseline expandability with the Windows tablets. Depending on the vendor, the devices can come with a dock, USB, miniHDMI and microSD. Add other optional manufacturer-supported accessories and the iPad is left in the dust.</p><p>Other pluses include playing nicely with Active Directory, Microsoft's directory service for authenticating and authorizing users and computers in a Windows network. The tablets, through the Atom processor, also offer Intel security, which includes Secure Boot and the firmware-based Platform Trust Technology.</p><p>Overall, the fourth-generation iPad provides roughly a half-dozen enterprise features, while the Windows tablets have more than a dozen. Most important, those features are already in use in corporations, so there's no need to evaluate them before deployment, train IT staff or purchase new tools.</p><p>What this ultimately means is the Windows tablets will be less expensive when considering the total cost owning and managing the devices. In addition, they are more durable and as nicely designed as the new iPads, and have larger displays. The resolutions are less, but still more than adequate for businesses.</p><h2>Some Disagreement</h2><p>How much of a head start Apple has in the enterprise is tough to determine, since the company won't say how many iPads have been sold to businesses. However, a running tally of the <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/sap/2012/08/31/top-50-ipad-rollouts-by-enterprises-schools/">top 100 iPad rollouts</a> kept by SAP show that nearly 70 are K-12 schools, where Apple has always done well. Nevertheless, there are some notable names on the list, including the U.S. Air Force, United Airlines, British Airways, General Electric and the Walt Disney Company.</p><p>Not everyone agrees with Moor. Jack Gold, principal analyst for <a href="http://jgoldassociates.com/%20">J. Gold Associates</a>, believes the market momentum is still behind the iPad. Units within an organization, not the IT department, will often choose the tablet they want to use and many want the iPad.</p><p>"The iPad, and Android (tablets), will have a place as long as users demand it," Gold said. "And the Win8 devices will find a niche, particularly in those organizations that have company-owned assets that IT fully controls."</p><p>While Gold has a point, the advantages the latest Windows tablets have are too numerous for corporations to ignore.</p><p><em>Image courtesy of Wikimedia.<a href="http://www.shutterstock.com"><br tml-linebreak="true" /></a></em></p>A new study shows the advantages of the latest Windows tablets from Dell, Lenovo and Hewlett-Packard over Apple's tablets are too numerous for corporations to ignore.http://readwrite.com/2013/03/19/latest-windows-tablets-threaten-ipad-in-business
http://readwrite.com/2013/03/19/latest-windows-tablets-threaten-ipad-in-businessWorkTue, 19 Mar 2013 08:53:00 -0700Antone Gonsalves